Marco Mancuso is a critic and curator in the field of Digital Technologies applied to Arts, Design and Contemporary Culture. Founder and Editor-In-Chief at Digicult and Digimag Journal (part of The Leonardo Affiliate Program), he teaches “Multimedia Arts Theory” at MAIND Interaction Design Master at SUPSI in Lugano, "Web 2.0 & Media Art Management" at NABA Academy in Milan, “Digital Publishing for the Arts” at Academy of Fine Art in Bergamo and is visiting professor at Transmedia-Postgraduate Program in Arts+Media+Design in Brussels.

Marco Mancuso has been expertising from years on wider subjects like open communication, social networking and digital publishing and is now studying new economical Internet models for art and culture: with the project “Fracty: Trasformazioni Affini”, he theorized an online platform creating open and p2p professional links between investors, public and private, from the scientific-technological field, professionals and students in the field of technologies applied to art, design and contemporary culture. He recently developed the “Digicult Editions” open-publishing online service.

Lecturing internationally and writing critical texts for media art publications and catalogues, articles, interviews and essays for Digicult, Marco Mancuso curated for MCD-Musiques et Cultures Digitales the publication “The Open Future” - Issue 63 in 2012 and the carde-blanche “Art Industries” - Issue 74 in 2014. He was included in the publication Cultural Blogging in Europe by LabForCulture.org in 2010.

A “Little Sun” in the art world: an interview to Olafur Eliassonby Silvia Bertolotti

It is true that two of the main elements of Eliasson’s arts have always been social participation (also in terms of interaction, use of public spaces and rising of social awareness) and the dialogue with the natural environment. The artistic act, in an exemplary project as Little Sun, can become a call for action and social/environmental engagement, as the artist once more declares: “In everyday life, it is important that we critically engage in global initiatives and local contexts. Our actions have consequences for the worlds.

Silvia Bertolotti has interviewed the media artist Chris Salter. They spoke about his last project "Displace 2.0", which is part of his research on the creation of augmented performative environments where sensor based tools and technologies challenge the sensorial experience on different levels (audio, visual, tactile, olfactive, etc). Developed with TeZ Maurizio Martinucci and the anthropology professor David Howes, and presented at TodaysArt festival 2012, it's a seminal experience for all lovers of close relationships between Art, Perception & Science

Can a common language be found? Report from “Paraphrasing Babel” exhibition by Alessandra Saviotti

Alessandra Saviotti reports about the "Paraphrising Babel" exhibition, displayed in many different locations in Maastricht and Heerlen in South of The Netherlands, curated by Bert Van de Boom and Annet Dekker. The program was mainly focused on video installations, sound installations and video projections aiming to reflect on the different perception of language and communication

The so-called Rorschach ink-blot test is a psychodiagnostic method for the analysis of personality named after its inventor: Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach (1884-1922). During the test, the patient is asked to interpret a series of ten cards with symmetrical colored blots. According to advocates of this diagnostic method, different subjective responses to these ambiguous images – if appropriately registered and analyzed – would reveal the personality profile of the examined subject, as well as any psychiatric diseases or though disorder.

It’s from this complex and debated methodology that the title Rorschach Audio. Art & Illusion for Sound takes its cue. Rorschach Audio is the latest book by Joe Banks, perhaps better known for his artistic projects, signed, since 1995, with the name Disinformation. The result of more than a decade of research, the book starts from a trenchant critique of artistic uses and scientific claims of EVP – Electronic Voice Phenomena, but expands its scope to address the wider issues of auditory illusions, psychoacoustic ambiguities, and misperceptions of sound stimuli. The central thesis of the book is that it is the mind to project illusory, familiar, and subjective meanings into ambiguous, undefined and unknown sounds, similarly to what happens in the visual field with the Rorschach ink-blots.

Marcin Ramocki is a Polish-born Brooklyn artist. He began experimenting with new media in the mid-1990s, with digital installations and interactive works on the Web. Some of his best known pieces are Virtual Singer (2000), Torcito Project(2005) and Blogger Skins (2009). His works have been exhibited at MoMA – The Museum of Modern Art (New York), Hirshorn Museum (Washington, DC) and many more istitutions. On 17 November 2012 he opened his first solo exhibition in Italy: . The exhibition is curated by Chiara Moro in the spaces of ULTRA gallery in Udine and is organized by the non-profit association "art ex dono". The author Filippo Lorenzin had the opportunity to ask him some questions about his early experiments with new media, the role of the programmer and his new exhibition.

Please, read at the English translation of the project that Digicult has applied for an important fund for culture in Italy. The fund is called Che Fare (http://www.che-fare.com/), not promoted by any cultural institutions but by private investors, to find possibile indipendent ideas and projects for culture, using online strategies, open culture tools and 2.0 peer economies, in a time of crisis.

FRACTY/Affine Transformations wants to be a platform for open and transparent discussions between industries, professionals and young students of the cultural industry; a tool for understanding the real needs of the customers, allowing creatives and young new-professionals to stimulate their potential thinking projects aimed at creating a common participation through collective planning mechanisms (peer-production).

We really need your HELP to be in the last 5 most voted projects. If you like our idea, our vison, if you would understand the importance of a fund like this one for such a small project like Digicult, if you would understand the importance to be linked and work more with Italy in the future...let's vote and share and discuss...

Thanks in advance for all the help you could give us, my bestMarco Mancuso

“PLACES AND SPACES” - THE CALL: The birth, growth and development of spaces open to the creative and experimental use of Media and Digital technologies have affected the production and dissemination of contents, have enriched the art system and its boundaries, have provided new methodologies of production, modes of art display and creative practices (and the daily work of individuals engaged in the field).

WHAT IS THE DIGIMAG JOURNAL:Digimag Journal is a new interdisciplinary peer-reviewed online publication, seeking high-standard articles and reviews at the intersection between digital art and contemporary art production, the impact of the last technological and scientific developments on modern society, economy, design, communication and third millennium creativity.

DIGICULT PUBLISHINGDigicult Publishing is a publishing initiative of the Digicult project, whose goal is to be active in the publication of the Digimag Journal, but also critical and theoretical essays commissioned to international authors, university thesis of special interest, publications edited in collaboration with other national and international publishers, conference proceedings and classes materials connected to educational activities, as well as peer-reviewed publications with institutional partners. Digicult Publishing uses all the tools of a contemporary dynamic digital publishing: the print on demand (POD) approach through the Digicult Edition platform on Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/digiculteditions), the electronic publication initiatives according to The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) standards through the Online Shop on Flows (http://www.flows.tv/digicultshop), always giving the chance to join all the prevwievs through the Digicult Library on Issuu http://issuu.com/digicultlibrary). All contents by Digicult Publishing are circulating under CC Licences: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.

UPCOMING PUBLICATIONS

PageRank#CMdc01BEdited by Mauro Ceolin, Claudio Musso

The book has the double function of collecting and continue the experience PageRank#CMdc born on the occasion of an interview between the two curators published on Digimag. PageRank # CMdc represents a new stage of contemporaryNaturalism, the project with which Mauro Ceolin intended to build a line of research that has the ability to incorporate a variety of discourses, languages ​​and meta-languages. Since 2006, in fact, built a path in progress based on the logics of the catalog and archive to highlight the existence of a biology of the contemporary imagery. The action is developed in three phases: prologue, performance, documentation. This volume contains the documentation for all phases of the project, including an interview with Mauro Ceolin by Pau Waelder and an unpublished text by Claudio Musso

Connecting HavanaEdited by Lucrezia Cippitelli

With texts by Mirian Real Arci, Lucrezia Cippitelli, Adolfo Cabrera Perez, Minerva Romero Regalado, Connecting Havana is a research and educational project developed in Havana (Cuba) between September 2010 and September 2011, curated by Lucrezia Cippitelli with Miguel Petchkovsky/TIME_FRAME/Netherland Media Art Institute. The project has been developed as a long-term research and educational program, focused on time-based and media art from a South/South perspective. Focusing on time-based and media art as tool of self-representation and critical process of creation and participation, Connecting Havana had the chance to visit and involve local creativity, discovering a local context of artists and producers who use the languages of contemporary creation as tool of social interaction, political intervention, cultural critique. Not calling themselves dissidents, not questioning the revolutionary history of the Country, sometimes working within or with institutions. This publication is not a simple documentation of the process, but primarily aims to introduce the work of the artists who participated: a general survey of critical perspectives on contemporary art practices in Havana from the very last years.

The Materiality of the Ephemeral: The Identity of Live Audiovisual Performance, Documentation and Memory ConstructionEdited by Dr. Ana Carvalho

The work presented here proposes a theoretical model to document audiovisual live performance in collaborative environments. Given its ephemeral features (as flux) and not objectual (or stable), vive audiovisual performance puts to the front peculiar questions regarding contemporary documentation. The formulation of a conceptual documentation model develops from a historical and theoretical framework that defines the identity of the practices, the artists and community through dynamics of affectation. The model, unique and specific, serves the purpose to document the creative process, the performative moment and community gatherings.